The present invention relates to an endoscope for magnified image observation with an observation port for observing a magnified image being provided at a distal end of an insertion part to take in the magnified image to be observed.
There is widely generally performed a procedure to examine whether lesion or the like exists by visually observing an inside of in vivo hollow viscera with an endoscope. However, even though the lesion can be found with such an endoscope, in many cases, it is difficult to make a definite diagnosis about whether the lesion is cancerous tissue.
Hence, some tissues are taken from the lesion that has been judged that it might be the cancerous tissue by the endoscope inspection with a bioptome and the like. However, in spite of the lesion being concluded not to be the cancerous tissue in most cases, mucous membrane of an in vivo luminal wall is so damaged merely by the tissue examination as to bleed.
For this reason, recently, an endoscope for magnified image observation that is able to microscopically observe a super-magnified image of a region with a diameter less than 1 mm, such as a confocal endoscope, has been developed. Therefore, it has become possible to make a definite diagnosis about whether the lesion is the cancerous tissue only by direct observation with such an endoscope without taking the biopsy tissues. For example, the endoscope of this kind is disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publications No. 2004-344201, No. 2005-80769, and No. 2005-640.
In the meantime, when a cancer cell is found by the examination of an affected area, a medical treatment is required for the affected area. In this case, after the tissues have been taken from the affected area with the bioptome, it is possible to confirm and record a location of a bleeding portion since the location can easily be specified in an observation image by a normal wide-field endoscope.
On the other hand, there can be displayed on a screen only too small region of the observation image microscopically super-magnified by the endoscope for magnified image observation. Therefore, there is caused such a problem that it is impossible to understand to which portion of an internal organ the affected area corresponds, and that even though the cancer cell is found, it is impossible to accurately specify the location thereof.